History Vocabulary: 245 Key English Terms

A length of time in history that historians treat as a unit because it has its own typical features, such as the Tudor period or the Tanzimat period.

A long and distinct stage of history, usually marked by an important event, ruler or change, such as the Victorian era or the Cold War era.

A period of one hundred years; in history, usually one of the numbered hundred-year blocks of the calendar, such as the sixteenth century.

Short for 'before Christ': written after a year to show that it comes before the traditional starting point of the Western calendar, as in 500 BC.

Short for the Latin 'Anno Domini' ('in the year of the Lord'): used with years of the Western calendar counted from the traditional date of Christ's birth.

A complex society with cities, written records, organised government and specialised work, or the culture and way of life of a particular people or region.

Belonging to the very distant past, especially to the period before the end of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD.

The period of European history between the end of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and roughly the late fifteenth century.

The order in which events happened, or a list or table that sets out events and their dates in that order.

The cultural movement in Europe from about the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, starting in Italy, marked by renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman learning and art.

The European intellectual movement of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that stressed reason, science, individual rights and criticism of traditional authority.

The long period of human history before writing was invented, known mainly through archaeology, fossils and other physical remains.

The period when people made tools and weapons mainly from bronze, an alloy of copper and tin; in the Near East roughly 3300 to 1200 BC.

Relating to the New Stone Age, when people began farming, keeping animals and living in permanent villages, starting around 10,000 BC in the Near East.

Relating to the period of roughly 1500 to 1800, between the Middle Ages and the modern age, marked by printing, global exploration, new states and early capitalism.

The ancient past, especially the age of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilizations before the Middle Ages; also an object surviving from that time.

Belonging to or typical of the Middle Ages, roughly the period from the fifth to the late fifteenth century.

The sixteenth-century religious movement in Western Europe that challenged the authority and practices of the Catholic Church and led to the founding of Protestant churches.

A regional archaeological period in which copper working accompanied continued use of stone tools.

An archaeological period characterized by widespread use of iron for tools and weapons in a particular region.

A period known partly through outside written accounts when local written evidence is absent or limited.

An interval between rulers or established governments during which normal succession or authority is interrupted.

A solar calendar introduced under Julius Caesar, with a leap day every fourth year.

A reformed solar calendar introduced in 1582 that adjusts the Julian leap-year rule.

An Islamic lunar calendar whose era is counted from the year of the Hijra.

A historical period commonly framed from 1789 to 1914 to connect revolutionary and industrial transformations.

A name for major changes in European approaches to nature, observation and mathematical explanation during the early modern period.

A large state or group of territories and peoples ruled by a single supreme authority, often an emperor or sultan, and usually built through conquest.

A series of rulers who come from the same family and pass power from one generation to the next, or the period during which such a family rules.

The period during which a king, queen, emperor or sultan rules; as a verb, to rule as a monarch.

The policy or practice of a state taking control of other territories and peoples, settling or ruling them, and using their land and resources for its own benefit.

A system of government in which a king, queen, emperor or other hereditary ruler is head of state, or a country governed in this way.

Supreme authority over a territory and its people, including the right to make laws and to govern without control from any outside power.

A territory ruled by another, usually distant, state, or a settlement founded by people from another country who stay under its control.

An independent state made up of a city and the land around it, with its own government, laws and army, such as ancient Athens or Renaissance Venice.

To give up the throne or another position of supreme power formally, either by choice or under pressure.

A gradual loss of power, wealth, size or importance, as when an empire, city or industry becomes weaker over a long period.

The state founded in north-western Anatolia around 1300 by the dynasty of Osman, which grew into an empire across south-eastern Europe, western Asia and North Africa and lasted until 1922.

The eastern part of the Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, which survived the fall of the western half and lasted until the Ottoman conquest of 1453.

The policy or practice of a state extending its power over other territories and peoples, through conquest, colonies or economic and political influence.

The process by which colonies became independent states, especially in Asia and Africa in the decades after the Second World War.

In medieval Europe, a person who held land from a lord in return for loyalty and service; more broadly, a ruler or state that accepts the authority of a stronger power.

The process by which a new ruler takes the place of the previous one, and the rules or customs that decide who has the right to the throne.

Government exercised on behalf of a monarch who cannot personally rule, for example because of age or absence.

A ceremony in which a monarch is formally crowned and publicly invested with royal status.

An inheritance principle giving priority to the firstborn child, often the eldest son in historical systems.

A monarchy in which a ruler is chosen by an authorized electorate rather than succeeding automatically by descent.

An arrangement in which separate states share the same monarch while retaining distinct political identities.

A monarchy comprising territories governed through different laws, privileges or institutions under one ruler.

The doctrine that a monarch's authority derives from God rather than from subjects' consent.

A polity under another power's protection and significant external control while retaining a separate local government.

A province governed by a satrap, especially within the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

The office or rule of a caliph, or a political realm organized around that authority.

A senior minister or adviser to a ruler in several historical Islamic states.

A member of the Ottoman infantry corps closely associated with the sultan's central military establishment.

An Ottoman levy taking boys from certain Christian communities for conversion, training and service to the sultan.

Imperial administration exercised through local rulers or institutions operating under an outside power's authority.

Land or revenue assigned to a member of a ruling family, often a younger child, for support.

The formal installation of a person in an office, often through the presentation of symbols of authority.

Colonial domination organized around permanent settlement and control of land, often displacing Indigenous peoples and institutions.

A formal written agreement between two or more states, for example to end a war, settle borders or create an alliance.

The act of taking control of a country, city or people by military force, or a territory that has been taken in this way.

A formal agreement between warring sides to stop fighting, usually while the terms of a final peace treaty are negotiated.

A formal agreement between states or groups to support each other, especially in war, or the group of states that make such an agreement.

A military operation in which an army surrounds a town or fortress, cuts off its supplies and attacks it until the defenders surrender or the attackers give up.

The long rivalry between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies, from the late 1940s until 1991, without a direct full-scale war between them.

A war in which most of the world's major powers take part and fighting spreads across several continents; in practice, the wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945.

To take control of a territory and make it officially part of one's own state, often by force or without the agreement of the people living there.

A series of military operations carried out over a period of time in one area or with one main aim, such as capturing a city or defeating an enemy army.

Information, images or ideas spread in an organised way to influence public opinion, often one-sided or misleading, especially by governments in war or political struggle.

An act or circumstance presented as a reason or justification for going to war.

A movement or policy seeking to incorporate territory claimed as belonging to one's nation on ethnic or historical grounds.

A political desire or programme to reverse a previous defeat, often by recovering lost territory.

The use or threatened use of naval force to pressure another government into concessions.

A reduction of tension and improvement in relations between rival states.

A policy of making concessions to a threatening power in the hope of avoiding conflict.

Payments or transfers demanded to compensate for harm caused by a war or other historical wrong.

The surrender of a force or fortified place, often under negotiated terms.

The broad mobilization of a population for war, especially associated with revolutionary France.

The deliberate destruction of supplies and infrastructure to deny their use to an opposing force.

A privately operated armed vessel, or its operator, authorized by a government to attack enemy shipping.

A government commission authorizing a private vessel to attack or seize enemy shipping.

Warfare involving extensive mobilization of a society's resources and a broad erosion of distinctions between military and civilian spheres.

The sudden, often violent overthrow of a government or political system by its people, or any deep and rapid change in society, the economy or ideas.

An act of resistance in which a group of people rise up against those in power, usually in a particular region or city and often with few weapons.

A planned change to laws, institutions or practices meant to improve them, usually made step by step by those in power rather than through revolution.

The idea that people who share a language, culture or history form a nation, and that this nation should have its own state or govern itself.

The situation of a country that governs itself and is not ruled or controlled by another state.

A sudden and usually illegal seizure of power by a small group, often army officers, who remove the existing government by force or the threat of force.

A system of government, or the group of people in power in a country for a certain period, often used for governments that are not democratic.

An organized effort to defeat a revolution or reverse the political and social changes it introduced.

The killing of a monarch, or a person held responsible for that killing.

The rejection or destruction of religious images because their use is considered unacceptable.

The granting or extension of voting rights to people previously excluded from the electorate.

The removal or effective denial of a person's or group's right to vote.

A supporter of extending voting rights, especially a campaigner for women's suffrage.

A woman associated with militant campaigning for women's voting rights, especially in early twentieth-century Britain.

A movement seeking to end slavery or the slave trade.

The freeing of an individual from slavery by a recognized act or procedure.

A nineteenth-century British movement for parliamentary reform organized around the demands of the People's Charter.

The movement associated with English textile workers who broke machinery during early nineteenth-century labour conflicts.

A term for the social and political order of medieval Europe in which lords granted land to vassals in return for loyalty and military service, while peasants worked the land.

A person who lives in the countryside and farms a small piece of land with family labour, often paying rent, taxes or labour services to a landowner or the state.

A system in which people are legally owned by others, forced to work without pay and denied basic freedoms, or the condition of being enslaved.

The highest social class in many societies, made up of noble families who usually held inherited titles, land and political influence.

The growth of towns and cities, and the movement of a growing share of the population from the countryside into urban areas.

The movement of people from one place to another to live, either within a country or across borders, alone or in large groups.

In medieval and early modern Europe, a peasant who was legally bound to a lord's land, owed labour and dues, and could not leave without permission.

The ability to read and write, and the share of a population who have this ability, which historians use to study education and social change.

A group of people in a society who share a similar economic position, such as wealth, occupation or education, and often similar status and opportunities.

Unpaid labour required by an authority, often imposed on rural households for public or seigneurial work.

A labour arrangement binding a person to an employer for a specified term under a contract.

A condition in which a debt binds a person to labour under terms that restrict their ability to leave.

A community formed by people who escaped slavery and established life beyond enslavers' direct control.

An institution where poor people received basic support under conditions that commonly included compulsory work.

A membership association whose contributions funded support for members facing illness, death or other agreed needs.

A historical rule restricting dress, consumption or display, often according to rank or social status.

Property or wealth transferred at marriage from the bride or her family, under customs that vary between societies.

A historical common-law doctrine that subsumed much of a married woman's legal identity under her husband's.

A member of the hereditary elite order of ancient Rome; also an elite citizen in some later urban societies.

In ancient Rome, a citizen belonging to the order outside the hereditary patrician elite.

A farming arrangement with holdings divided into strips across large fields managed through shared rules.

The seasonal movement of livestock and their keepers between different grazing grounds.

The process through which mobile populations become more permanently settled.

Shared understandings and representations of the past maintained within a group.

A repeated practice presented as continuous with the past although its formal pattern is relatively recent.

The historical formation of distinct religious communities through doctrine, institutions and regulation of everyday practice.

An act or practice deliberately marking the memory of a past person, group or event.

The shift from hand production to machines, factories and new energy sources such as coal and steam, which began in Britain in the late eighteenth century.

A regular path by land, river or sea along which merchants carried goods between regions, such as the Silk Road or the spice routes of the Indian Ocean.

An economic policy common in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century that tried to increase a state's wealth and power by exporting more than it imported and building up gold and silver.

The process by which an economy shifts from mainly farming and handicrafts to large-scale manufacturing in factories using machines.

An association of craftsmen or merchants in the same trade that set standards, controlled training and prices, and protected its members, especially in medieval and early modern towns.

The severe worldwide economic crisis that followed the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and lasted through much of the 1930s, bringing mass unemployment and falling trade.

The network of overland and sea trade routes that linked China with Central Asia, the Middle East and the Mediterranean from ancient times to around the fifteenth century.

Relating to farming, land and the people who work it, or describing a society or economy based mainly on agriculture.

A system organizing rural production and obligations around a lord's estate and dependent peasant holdings.

The part of a lord's estate reserved for the lord's own use or direct benefit rather than tenant holdings.

A large landed estate, especially in accounts of the ancient Roman countryside.

A farming arrangement in which a cultivator gives the landholder an agreed share of the crop.

An arrangement granting a person or group the right to collect specified taxes in return for payment to an authority.

A reduction in the precious-metal content of coinage while its stated monetary value is maintained.

Money in the form of coin, especially gold or silver, rather than paper promises of payment.

The growth of rural manufacturing for wider markets before or alongside the rise of mechanized factories.

A labour payment system using goods, tokens or restricted purchasing credit instead of ordinary cash wages.

A trading pattern connecting three regions through different outward and return flows, notably in Atlantic history.

The forced Atlantic crossing of enslaved Africans to the Americas within the slave trade.

The movement of organisms, crops and diseases between the Americas and other regions following sustained contact after 1492.

A company granted special rights by a ruler or state, historically sometimes including trade monopolies or governing powers.

A trading centre where goods are gathered and redistributed to other markets.

A term for the widening economic gap between parts of Europe and parts of Asia, and the debate over its timing and causes.

An arrangement in which merchants supply materials to dispersed workers who process them, often at home, for payment.

The study of past events, especially those of human societies, and the written account that historians produce from the evidence they find.

A person who studies and writes about the past, usually by examining sources, comparing evidence and offering an interpretation of events.

The writing of history, and especially the study of how historians have written about a subject over time, which sources they used and how their views changed.

A particular explanation of what past events meant or why they happened, based on the evidence and on the historian's questions and point of view.

Information from sources, objects or data that helps show whether a claim about the past is true, or how likely it is.

Something placed in the wrong period, such as an object, word or idea, or the mistake of judging the past by the standards and concepts of a later time.

Understanding of an event or situation that comes only after it has happened, when its results are already known.

A moment or event that causes an important change in the direction of history, after which things develop differently.

The lasting effects, ideas, institutions or problems that a person, period, empire or event leaves behind for later generations.

An approach to history that studies a small unit in great detail, such as one person, village, event or court case, to throw light on larger questions.

The dividing of the past into named periods, such as antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the debate about where the boundaries between them should fall.

The re-examination of accepted views of the past in the light of new evidence or questions; the word can also mean distorting well-established facts for political ends.

The circumstances, ideas and events of the time in which something happened or was written, which help explain its meaning.

The systematic study of a defined group's lives to identify shared backgrounds, careers and connections.

The application of economic theory and quantitative methods to questions about the past.

A historiographical tradition associated with the French journal Annales and interdisciplinary study of social life and long-term structures.

A scale of historical analysis emphasizing slow-changing structures over long spans of time.

An approach emphasizing the experiences and actions of people outside powerful elites.

A historiographical approach examining subordinated groups and questioning histories organized primarily around elites.

Historical work created with or for audiences beyond specialist academic settings.

The study of changing relationships between people and the nonhuman environment over time.

The study of past populations and patterns of births, deaths, marriages and migration.

An approach tracing movements, relationships and processes across national boundaries.

Historical reasoning that examines plausible alternatives to what actually happened to explore causation.

An interpretation presenting the past as a progressive path toward valued institutions of the present.

An absence or weak representation in surviving records resulting from how records were created, kept or lost.

Interpreting a source to recover meanings or experiences that its creator did not intend to emphasize.

The study of a people's past by combining historical sources with approaches from anthropology.

Evidence created at the time being studied or by people who witnessed it, such as letters, diaries, official records, photographs or objects.

A work that discusses or interprets the past using other evidence and was written after the events, such as a history book, journal article or biography.

A collection of historical records kept for long-term use, or the building or institution where such records are stored and made available to researchers.

A book or document written by hand, especially one produced before printing became common; also an author's text before it is published.

A one-sided view that makes a source or a writer favour one person, group or explanation, so that the account is not fully balanced or complete.

An official count of a population carried out by a state, usually recording details such as age, sex, household, occupation or property.

A written account of historical events arranged in the order in which they happened, usually composed during or soon after the period it describes.

The careful evaluation of a historical source to judge where it came from, who made it and why, and how reliable and useful it is for a particular question.

The collection and study of people's spoken memories of the past, usually through recorded interviews, and the recordings that result.

Words carved, cut or painted on stone, metal, a building or another hard surface, often to record a ruler's deeds, a law, a dedication or a burial.

The origin of a document or object and the record of who has owned or kept it since it was made, used to judge whether it is genuine and lawfully held.

A professional who collects, organises, preserves and describes the records in an archive and helps researchers find and use them.

The study and decipherment of historical handwriting and its forms.

The study of documents' forms, production and transmission to assess their character and authenticity.

The study of manuscripts as physical books, including their construction, materials and arrangement.

The study of coins and related monetary objects as evidence of their production, use and historical setting.

The study of seals, their impressions and their historical use.

A manuscript volume collecting copies of charters or other documents, often concerning an institution's rights and property.

A writing surface reused after earlier writing was erased or removed, sometimes leaving recoverable traces.

A statement, usually at a book's end, giving information about its copying or production.

A written rendering of a document that closely preserves specified features of the original, such as spelling and layout.

A descriptive tool that helps researchers understand and locate archival material.

The whole body of records organically created and accumulated by one person, family or organization.

The organization and sequence of records established by their creator during use.

A chronological list of documents accompanied by summaries of their contents.

A local church record of events such as baptisms, marriages and burials.

A list and often a valuation of a deceased person's possessions prepared during the administration of the estate.

A record listing members of a military unit for attendance, service or pay purposes.

A reference work listing places with geographical, administrative or historical information.

A source in which a person presents their own experiences, actions or sense of self.

Writing about the lives and virtues of saints, often shaped by devotional purposes.

An office responsible for producing and issuing a ruler's or institution's formal documents.

A group of records linked by a common activity, function or filing process and maintained as a unit.

An edition presenting an established text together with documented editorial decisions and significant variant readings.

A library or archive identifier used to locate and request a particular item.

The study of the human past through the material remains people left behind, such as buildings, tools, pottery, bones and traces in the soil.

An object made or shaped by people, such as a tool, coin, weapon or piece of jewellery, especially one studied for what it reveals about the past.

The careful digging and recording of an archaeological site to uncover buildings, objects and other remains in the order in which they were buried.

A place where evidence of past human activity has been found or preserved, such as the remains of a settlement, cemetery, temple or workshop.

A scientific method that estimates the age of organic material such as wood, bone or seeds by measuring how much radioactive carbon-14 is left in it.

The study of the layers of soil and debris at a site, based on the principle that lower layers were usually laid down before the ones above them.

The remaining parts of buildings or a town that has been destroyed or has fallen down over time.

Dating and studying wood through patterns in annual tree-ring growth.

Arranging artifacts or assemblages into a sequence using changes in their characteristics or frequencies.

A fragment of broken pottery, especially one recovered and studied archaeologically.

Stone debris produced when tools are made or reshaped by flaking.

A small shaped stone piece often used as a component of a composite tool.

A stone artifact shaped by removing flakes from both faces.

A deposit built up through the repeated disposal of food remains and other discarded material.

A hole dug to hold a post, or the archaeological trace left by that hole and its fill.

Objects deliberately placed with a burial, whose meanings depend on the burial practice and context.

A group of valuable objects deliberately placed together, often concealed or stored and not recovered by its depositor.

A diagram representing the relative sequence of archaeological contexts through their stratigraphic relationships.

A chronological limit before which an event or deposit cannot have occurred.

A chronological limit by which an event or deposit must already have occurred.

The study of plant remains from archaeological contexts to investigate past environments and human activity.

The study of animal remains from archaeological contexts to understand past human-animal relationships.

The study of processes affecting remains from death or discard through deposition to recovery.

Testing ideas about past practices through controlled reconstruction or replication of activities and objects.

The study of living communities' material practices to develop questions and analogies for archaeological interpretation.

Systematic walking across an area to observe, record or collect archaeological material visible on the ground.

The recorded location of an archaeological find within a site, including its spatial and contextual position.

A recurring combination of material traits grouped by archaeologists within a particular time and area.

A group of archaeological finds treated together because of a shared context, period or analytical purpose.

Dating material by matching its characteristics with comparable material in an independently established sequence.